Hi MrTurtle! Bravo to your pastor for leading you to Marriage Builders.

It would help your wife if she could move back home with you and you guys throw yourselves into recovery. Dr Harley recommends trying to get away on a little vacation together. Is that possible? That would help her get through withdrawal much faster.

Welcome! Mr. t, trust the help that will come!

Thank you so much for all of your responses and encouragement. I can't even explain how much it means to me to have your support right now. This is the most difficult and painful thing I have ever gone through.

I will explain a little bit about my parents. I don't feel as if I have ever really had a good relationship with them, but they see things differently. They believe that they know me so well and can read me so well, but that's simply not true.

My mom has some mental illness issues and often goes on and off of her medication. She has no filter when she speaks and is often very hurtful. She is selfish and does not think of what others want or how they feel. She wants everything to be her way and when its not or I say I want something different, she begins insulting me and putting me down.

For example, a big issue with her is where we live. We live in MN and she hates it and wants to move. She will say "I effing hate MN and your husband is so lame, he is never going to move away from here and that's sick! You need to go where ever we decide to go because you must be by your family."

She brings up the strangest things to be mean about like "I hate your apartment, you guys get the crappiest places to live and I just think it is disgusting and smells and I never want to come see you." I have no idea where she comes up with these things, as I am very clean.

She is just so cruel and demanding. She has never liked my husband. She saw him as the one who took me away from the family. She no longer had me at her beck and call anymore.

My dad feels the same way too...he's not much better.

They have never gotten along with my husband's family. My mom describes them as "the most effing annoying people I have ever met." They like different things and live a different type of life than my parents and my parents just "can't stand them."

My parents have never understood my marriage...its like they find anything bad that they can...any little thing...but they refuse to see how happy I was. They would tell my husband and I that we were "too affectionate and got on their nerves."

I did not talk badly about my husband at all during the affair. I think I actually started to feed into the negative things they were saying about him.

lt, the sooner you are away from them and with your husband the better. When do you plan on moving back in? Can you move back home this weekend?

Well, we are going to take things pretty slow at first. We are going to read the last half of the book and get together and discuss each chapter and step once or twice a week. After we accomplish that then we will start the process of moving back in together. Along the way we will also meet up with our Pastor as well on a regular basis.
Its going to be hard but it can only get easier, everyone here is giving awesome advice and I look forward to a responses to the both of us.

By slow, do you mean next week? Because the sooner you are living together, the faster you will recover. Living together achieves a couple of things, it helps her overcome the temptation to contact the OM and you are better able to meet each others needs when you are spending the nights together.

Welcome MrTurtle. You could not have come to a better place. AND, you got Melody helping you. She is VERY, VERY good. Keep reading, do the questionaires and soak it all in. Keep posting here for the guidance and support to help you on your journey. Kudos to you!!

I will explain a little bit about my parents(...crazy....irrational...toxic...selfish...immature...) I did not talk badly about my husband at all during the affair.

I think I actually started to feed into the negative things they were saying about him.

Okay, then, now that you've taken eight paragraphs to support my initial proposition, you can understand why having ZERO contact with these hyenas will facilitate your recovery, right?

loveturtles, you did a really good job explaining the issue with your parents. Your mom's mental illness issues prevent her from being a supportive, accepting type of person. Her selfishness and lack of filter is very destructive to those around her. Her outlook on life is very negative and sick. You just don't say those types of things to people. In the end, it is abusive to you. It is not loving or helpful, it hurts you, it hurts your relationship with her. Moreover, it hurts your relationship with your H. She wouldn't like anyone, you know that right? They aren't concerned for you or your marriage, only their selfish feelings and what they want.

You most definately allowed the negative things they would say permeate and poison your connection to your H. It is VERY difficult to not, at some point, after being told enough, buy into those statements. It affects how you feel about the other person. The problem is that you lost sight of NEVER letting anyone come between you and your H - not even your parents!!! You leave them and cling to your H. and when you want to honor your parents in life, it is almost impossible to develop the bond with your H with your parents doing what they were doing. I agree with the last post, you have to distance yourself from their toxic, cruel, selfishness. Honor your H now. They have probably hurt him over the years, so you stick up for him and honoring him and your covenant would probably put a LOT of huge deposits in his love bank!!!